In 1993, French rockstar Bertrand Cantat met Hungarian art director Krisztina Rády in a festival in Budapest.
In 1997, they married. The couple had two children; Milo, born in 1998, and Alice, born in 2003. Soon before their daugher was born, in 2002, they broke up because he began an affair with French actress Marie Trintignant.
On 26 July 2003, Cantat and Trintignant got in a fight and he beat her, inflicting 19 blows to Trintignant's head, causing irreversible brain damage. As a result, she died and he was convincted of her murder.
The case had a high profile on the media, and people rebelled against Cantat.
His house was burned down in Moustey. His spouse and his two children initially were supposed to be in the house at that time, but were in Bordeaux, instead.
Cantat was released from the French prison on parole in October 2007, after serving half of his sentence. After Cantat beat the actress to death in a Vilnius hotel room, Rady stuck by him and gave evidence in court on his behalf. When he was granted conditional release in 2007, they tried to resume their relationship.
Kristina Rady, a respected Hungarian arts director and Cantat's wife, hanged herself in 2010 - two-and-a-half years after the singer's release from jail for killing the actress Marie Trintignant in Lithuania.
In a telephone message to her parents left six months earlier, Rady spoke of the psychological and physical violence to which she said Cantat was subjecting her.
She said that "a series of events worse than those of 2003" was taking place; that on several occasions she had narrowly "escaped the very worst"; and that "if anything happened... there would be witnesses to testify".
In January 2010, Rady told her parents that she was suffering mental and physical abuse, and feared for her life.
"Everyone thinks he's an icon, and everyone wants the best for him, but then he comes home and does these terrible things to me in front of the family," she said.
On the night of 10 January 2010, Cantat's former wife Krisztina Rády died by suicide. At the time of her death, Bertrand Cantat was present in the house. She was discovered by their children the following day. Shortly before her death, Rády had complained of mental abuse by Cantat. The physical abuse she complained of on the answering machine is that he threw some objects at her, but she never mentioned that he was assaulting her. According to Cantat, Rády's parents had spent a week with him after the suicide. Magistrates in Bordeaux investigated Cantat in connection with Rady's suicide, but ultimately decided not to press charges.